


and this time, i swear we'll get it right

by Catherines_Collections



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Folie à Deux (Fall Out Boy), Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Insomnia, M/M, POV Second Person, Pete's just trying to get it right, Pre-Hiatus (Fall Out Boy), Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 03:10:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14227851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catherines_Collections/pseuds/Catherines_Collections
Summary: Originally, you call itFolie a Deuxas an inside joke in your rough drafts. Patrick doesn’t seem to think it’s as funny as it is when you end up keeping the title.You think of blood in hotel room toilets, shards of shattered hearts scattered across tour buses and too big venues, struggling to watch Patrick every chance you got, and decide it’s fitting..Or,Folie's creation and fall through on the edges of Infinity on High.





	and this time, i swear we'll get it right

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warning: heed the tags! 
> 
> Next, wow. I have so many thoughts on the creation of Folie and this encompasses only some of them. Timelines? What timelines? Again, this is fanfiction so of course I do not claim to think any of this is truly *real*. That being said, please enjoy a (mostly) coherent version of what @loveinamaltshop & I chat about A Lot. The angst potential of W.A.M.S and Pavlov are astronomical.
> 
> I own nothing besides the title, enjoy!

_ Infinity  _ provides a lot of things. Things like actual hotel rooms instead of sleeping in the van, and meals that aren’t just gas station food. It also provides a step up from what  _ Under the Cork Tree _ had and what  _ Take this to your grave _ could only imagine: premium venues.

This week's venue is a stadium, one of the biggest you’ve played yet, and you can’t stop staring once you unload. Patrick’s next to you, gaping in the same way you’re sure you are, and nudges you when a strangled noise escapes from your throat.

“What?” Patrick asks, and he’s looking at you, eyes torn away from the stadium, the awe still evident. For a moment, you pretend it’s there for you.

There’s a million things you want to say, a thousand similes you want to write and hundred of metaphors you’re dying to compose about how wrong everything feels, but you meet Patrick’s eyes and realize you can’t say any of them without further questioning.

“This isn’t what I thought it’d be,” you settle on instead, because it’s safer. Because baby blues are looking at you instead of looking through you for the first time in months, and you don’t want to go back to before. You don’t say,  _ this  _ means what your dreams of fame have amounted to, or that sometimes it feels like you’re running on borrowed time.

Patrick laughs, a half-formed noise and nearly overshadowed by all the yelling around you. You both watch as two guys next to you grab Andy’s drums and begin to set them up on stage. You still remember having to do that yourselves. Something ties a knot in your throat, and when you turn your gaze back to Patrick you think he must have it to. He looks torn between confusion and nostalgia, almost pained.

You laugh, because there’s little else to do now, and he turns back to you with a raise eyebrow.

“What?” He asks, bumping his shoulder into yours when you can’t stop. “Come on, Pete. You asshole. What’s so funny?”   
  
You don’t know how to tell him, so you let yourself fall forward until your head is buried in his neck. You’re still laughing after his breath hitches, and eventually the laughter faded into giddy giggles before it leaves completely.

When you fall back he’s blushing but with a small smirk on his lips as he shakes his head.

“Come on,” Patrick says, and you fall in line behind him before he even grabs for you. You’ll follow him wherever he goes, anyway. “We’ve gotta practice.”

Practicing doesn’t make much of a difference. You still have Patrick and so the show  _ rocks _ . You tell him as much afterwards, but he shrugs you off with a jutted elbow and grin when you crowd him.

Joe comes up and hugs you both from behind while Andy falls into step with you and grins. 

Thousands of voices are calling for an encore with your name attached, and you let the voices carry you out into the car with every step. It’ll suffocate you if you let it, so you don’t think about it, and pretend you won’t let it.

 

\--------

 

The transition isn’t gradual, and maybe that’s the terrifying part. Or maybe it’s that you can’t see the transitions until after you’ve lived them, or that everything is gray area now where it was so many colors before and that the fear never really sets in.

Some days go like this: you’ll be climbing onto stage props and screaming into microphones, laughing and watching yourself across the room thinking,  _ higher higher.  _ Climbing and desperate _ ,  _ trying to reach the top of something you can’t see. 

Others are spent- somewhere else. Somewhere where mental meets psychical but not in the external sense. Things don’t connect right, you’re going from no sleep to doing nothing but sleeping, and your body can’t will itself to move. These days, higher looks like impossible and you’ve never been so starving for what you can’t see.

Joe and Andy and Patrick are always there, lurking as you’re climbing. Patrick watches you, though, and it’s different in a way you can’t put words to. Sometimes you feel his eyes on your back and want to look over your shoulder and mouth  _ watch this, _ waiting for recognition, anything that shows you’re getting somewhere, moving until you can’t stop.

The doctor call it  _ Mania _ and follows it up with  _ bipolar  _ when you’re finally still enough to talk, and you want to laugh in their faces when they say  _ treatable.  _ It’s almost funny when they warn about spirals. You want to write an album about it and write songs and lyrics about climbing and never reaching and how you never realize how far down there is to fall until you’re the one falling.

There’s a parking lot miles away that has your ghost in it, and pills in your hands that have the doctors making promises of  _ never again _ . There are three boys outside your door who feel like extensions of yourself and a band that finally has a direction besides nowhere fast.

The world’s a fucking ride you didn’t ask for, but you don’t like being told when to get off. You twists the orange bottle in your hands and twirl the pills around on your tongue. This time you think you’ll write your own fate.

 

_ \-------- _

 

“I think we’re something,” you say, two shows later, all smiles and teeth, buzzing through your skin like it’s not something you’ve said a million times before. You’re teetering on the edge of something rather than climbing, but any of it’s better than sinking.

There’s a pile of pills in your hotel bathroom mocking you from miles away but they don’t matter right now. Not when Patrick’s looking at you like that, eyes wide from after-show adrenaline and pink lips doing a poor job at hiding a grin.

It’s different now, you think, remembering packed stadiums and crowds and the tour bus you’ve been sleeping in together for months. You don’t say,  _ we means the band _ , or define your  _ something _ . You leave it up for interpretation and wait to see what will be taken from the mix.

You’re praised for your hidden depths and written meanings now anyway, so you use it to your advantage. You’re used to words twisted beyond meaning and plucked and stitched together to create something new and nearly indecipherable, and you’re used to Patrick as the translator. 

You don’t have to define what you both already know. There are no words to hide behind here.

The stage feels like it’s on fire, and you keep glancing at your hands to make sure they aren’t burning, turning them over and back again until all you see are calluses in place of ash. Your tapping your foot absentmindedly on beat with the music playing through the speakers, like the more you move the lesser the chance of you vibrating out of yourself. 

Joe is screaming something back stage and Andy is laughing, and you look up from your hands to see Patrick, watching for a reaction in front of you as his lips twists into a soft smile, understanding loosening both your shoulders when he shakes his head in disbelief. 

You want to kiss him, you realize. You want to cup his cheeks and move your lips together until you make something new and beautiful, something you can write a millions songs about and listen as he strings along melodies to all the lyrics you’ve written about him. The feeling’s almost too much for how distant you feel from your skin. 

You don’t let yourself think past that. Your foot is still tapping and you blame the vibrations of the base for your shaking hands.

Patrick reaches out and takes your hand like he knows, can see how close you are getting to throwing yourself into the fire and letting it all burn, and runs a thumb across your knuckles. It places you, sends shivers down your spine and slows the thoughts in your mind like they’re being dragged through honey, and he glances up at you through his eyelashes.

“Yeah,” Patrick says, voices screaming behind both of you preparing for the next set but you can’t seem to hear anything over his voice and your own heartbeat. “We are.”

The world feels brighter, more alive, after the words slip out of Patrick’s mouth and into the open for everyone to hear. Like a declaration of belief, a proclamation of what is to come. It becomes real, becomes something plausible if Patrick believes it too, and you feel like you're being pulled a thousand different directions at once when he bumps his shoulder against yours.

Patrick’s hand stays in yours until you have to run to grab your base, and he’s the one to pull away. You play the next set thinking of pink lips and summer skin as your fingers bury themselves in wire. 

If you press them a little harder than usual, sneak away after to clean red from your silver strings, no one has to know.

 

\--------

 

When you get back you take your pills like the psychiatrist told you. 

Count them out,  _ one, two, three _ , before you pick them up, and don’t think about how you can hear the guys shuffling outside the bathroom walls, or how they always do this- rotate watching you in shifts.

They’re in the little blue case your mother bought for you and helped you organize, hands shaking as she placed the right circles in the correct squares labeled with times and dates.

She said,  _ helpful  _ and  _ preventative  _ with just enough of a tremor in her in voice that you didn’t snap back  _ controlling  _ and  _ dull _ . It’s not her fault the lyrics don’t come out right anymore, or that the pills seem to dry you up of everything you were. You don’t flush them, and that’s an improvement even if it feels like your world’s slipping through your fingertips every time you don’t.

Someone shuffles in the bedroom, feigning distraction, and you don’t think of the alternatives.

You line the pills up in your hand like pearls and diamonds and swallow them whole, dry. You’ve had practice with these things, and you like pills better than needles anyway. Too many marks, too many tallies and not enough days for them all- not enough words to weave between the lines.

You snap the blue lids close and are careful not to glance up at the mirror. When you leave you find out it was Andy’s turn on watch as he follows after you, pretending to fiddle with something in his hands.

You don’t call him on it because you can’t bring yourself to be mad about it. The after show adrenaline is fading and you can feel the pills already taking affect- loosening your body with every step. Suddenly you’re tired, bone deep exhaustion, and wonder if that means you’ll get some sleep tonight.

Andy follows you until you’re packed onto the bus. He leaves you with a sharp nod and careful smile before he walks over to the bus he’s sharing with Joe. Another night long drive to another too bright city. You collapse in your bunk and listen.

The bandages on your fingers only stay on for the night, after your tucked away in your own bunk, and you stare at them and count Patrick’s breaths above you.

_ One, two, three,  _ and make a fist. You stare at the top of your bunk, the bottom of his bunk, and take a breath.

The numbness, you decide, is what you hate the most.    
  


\--------

 

One of the best things about tour is the limited space. 

Well, most of the time it’s the worst thing about tour, especially when it means sharing showers limited private time, but right now- teetering on the edge of sleep as your eyes refuse to close, you are struck with a genius idea that almost makes the entire set-up worth it.

You shift out of your own bunk and wrap a blanket around yourself as you peel back the curtain and crawl into Patrick’s. He doesn’t move as you settle in, too used to the past midnight visits, but he makes a noise when you pull yourself next to him. You hold your breath and wait. Unsure whether you will be greeted by cranky Patrick or angry Patrick, but prepare yourself for either. Instead, you get an arm thrown around your waist as he curls into your chest with a sigh. 

Your heart beats erratically in your chest as his breathing evens out again, and eventually the two are enough to lull you to sleep. You don’t dream, a side effect of the new pills, but you think if you did he’d be there.

 

\-------

 

You love him, is the thing, and really it’s just another roadblock on the path to the end.

 

\-------

 

The next show is in Dallas and the world feels like it’s frozen over- boring and bland and you make a choice somewhere between  _ golden  _ and H _ um hallelujah _ . 

Andy and Joe take off after the show, and you can’t find Patrick, but you don’t really search too hard, afraid of what you might find. In the end the exhaustion wins out and you take a cab back to where you’re staying for the night.

When you get back to the hotel, for the first time in months, you are alone. You smile, wryly, and wonder who missed their shift.

Numbness runs through your veins and you can’t even feel the post-show adrenaline like this. You want anger, fury and rage and feeling, but instead you get nothing and the memory of a decision made mid-set.

You flush the pills without a second thought. Watch as white pools into clear with a quiet  _ splash _ . The external affair is really too quiet for how loud it is in your head.

You stuff the blue box in your suitcase and bury it beneath piles of clothes. If there are questions they have to be in the open- a sharp contrast from the unspoken agreement among your friends. Every rotation watch, every shifted eye at the blue box in the corner of the mirror, every bitten down curse of  _ freak  _ when someone gets too mad never  _ addressed _ .

The pills are a barrier and you flush them, watching as they spiral  _ down down down _ like a magic trick.  _ Never coming back, _ you think, and the thought makes you almost giddy.

You hide it all, every piece of evidence that you’re different from before, and make it so they have to ask about it. You  _ dare  _ them. You know they won’t.

You’re leaving the next morning, and when Patrick gets in he doesn’t look at you and he doesn’t ask about the pills. You have a million different lyrics about what that could mean.

 

\--------

 

There are at least ten more shows left in Infinity’s tour, but sitting in the tour bus surrounded by sheets of crumpled paper with half-legible lines, you think you’ve already written half of your next album.

It takes two days before the lyrics start coming again, and when they do it takes Patrick pounding on your bunk ceiling with a, _ time to go, Pete _ for you to realize you’ve been writing them all night.

You fold them all together, all ripped edges and torn areas from where you were writing too hard, and decide to wait five more shows before you show them to anyone.

 

\--------

 

Here’s the thing most of the love songs you’ve heard fail to capture- it’s consumption at its cruelest. 

It’s watching your best friend smile and laugh on stage as your heart moves with the music, and then listening to him chat up a girl afterwards. It’s wanting to call your therapist because your best friend spent the night with someone else and you couldn’t sleep so you laid awake in his bunk all night trying your best not to think. It’s how you scrawled over your wrist and arms so many lyrics tinged with bitterness you think you just wrote another album, but you stuffed the pages away where he won’t find them. 

It’s sitting in a bathroom stall tapping your foot against the floor, trying to sooth yourself mid-panic attack because your heart rate won’t slow and you feel like you’re going to puke because  _ it hurts  _ in the same way it _ doesn’t matter  _ and you can’t decide which is worse. 

But, then he looks at you when you board the bus, eyebrows furrowed in concern and you freeze when you spot the hickeys on his neck, and suddenly you know which is worse.

It’s cruel and unkind and you feel dizzy with it as you spend the next three nights composing love songs from longing, and ignore how Patrick stares when you hand him the lyrics. You play your base with your head down as he sings your confessions into the microphone and  _ don’t look up. _

None of the songs you’ve heard get it right, you learn, so you write them yourself. It’s the most you’ve written in months, and at this point you’re not even sure if any of it’s good but at least it’s  _ there _ .

It hurts, the ache present under your skin and crawling up your throat until it’s choking you, but it’s so much  _ more  _ than numbness that you’re relieved. With every scrape of pen against paper you make it better- bearable. 

You erase numb with sleepless nights and ink on skin hoping maybe, maybe you’ll find something in them.

 

\--------  
  


Two shows later Patrick shows up on the bus flushed and with his shirt collar folded up. He doesn’t meet your eyes when he brushes by you to the bathroom.

You write seven more pages and chose to wait until the tours over.

 

\--------

 

Shows blend into each other and sleep doesn’t come as easy as it once did, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because you have a new album in your hands and feeling in your skin as you pack it together to present.

Patrick stares at the paper for a long time when you finally give it to him. 

It’s just the two of you, Andy on a date and Joe sleeping back on the bus, and you’re supposed to be working on lyric ideas. You gathered all your half-formed thoughts from last night, bit down all your anger from how Patrick didn’t come back last night and put it into your pen and  _ composed _ .

Patrick’s knuckles are white as he holds the paper, but his face is getting redder by the second and you look away when he looks up.

“What the fuck is this?” Patrick hisses, lips turned down into a snarl, waving the paper like if he shakes it enough the words will vanish. Maybe he’ll rip it up, you think. Make it disappear. It won’t do anything. You made copies. You made sure it won’t.

“What the fuck is what?” You spit back, and Patrick throws the paper to the floor as he steps forward and pushes you. You stumbles back and he follows you, crowds you into the corner and gathers up the front of your shirt. You’re nearly nose to nose and Patrick’s furious, balling up his fist in your shirt like he’s thinking of using them on you. You wouldn’t mind, you think. More bruises to add to the collection, doesn't matter how they came to be only that they’re there. 

“You-,” Patrick’s spluttering, snarling and biting, digging too close too fast, and you’re too tired - heavy in your bones with blood weighing you down as your body keeps fucking making it - to find it hot, and that makes something dark in you twist further.  

“ _ What makes you so special? _ ” Patrick seethes, possibly willfully oblivious to your sudden disorientation, you can never really tell whenever he gets like this. He’s laughing, bitter and scalding, and something in your head starts to ring. “Fuck you! You don’t get to do this, Pete. You don’t  _ get to _ -” 

Patrick’s still talking when your breathing stops. You’re going to puke, you think, and you shove Patrick backwards this time but he doesn’t budge. It’s almost funny when you bend over, head falling onto Patrick’s chest, as you gag. It’s less funny when you realize you can’t remember the last time you ate, mid-dry-heave as Patrick scrambles back with a curse. 

You close your eyes and when you open them you’re on your knees with Patrick rubbing circles in your back, murmuring nothings into your ear. You blink and realize you’re mouth’s still open when the light and sound of the room finally catches back up to you. You snap it closed and pull away, ignoring how the short action leaves you seeing stars.

“Pete,” Patrick’s voice is saying, but you’re up and stumbling before he can finish.

Somehow, you get a cab and somehow you make it back to your hotel in one piece.

When you do, you fall to your knees on white bathroom tile and gag until something comes out. 

Red looks a little too pretty contrasted in clear so you grab for the pen in your pocket and write about it.

 

\--------

 

You don’t talk about it. That’s something you’re all getting very good at. 

Patrick comes back a little after you’ve cleaned yourself up and hidden the lyrics away. You’re curled up on the hotel bed with the lights off and curtains drawn, and keep your eyes shut when you hear him shuffle in.

He’s cursing, tripping over clothes trying to stay quiet, and when he finally climbs into bed with you he’s still careful. He curls up behind you, rigid and hesitates before locking an arm around your waist. It doesn’t mean anything, you know. Patrick doesn’t know anything different from constant contact as reassurance, doesn’t know this isn’t usual best friend behavior, but you’ll take it. You lean into the touch and he relaxes against you.

It’s not his job to do this. He’s not your therapist, he’s not your toy. He’s not even  _ yours _ , he’s something special and glowing, but-

You can feel Patrick’s light breaths on your shoulder. He’s asleep and you close your eyes, trying to find meaning in the spaces in-between breaths.

It doesn’t mean anything, and that almost makes it worse.

 

\--------  
  


It’s funny in a really fucked up way that Joe and Andy both agree to keep the lyrics. They book the earliest recording space available and Patrick doesn’t say a word. You’re practically bouncing off the studio walls until everyone shows up and Andy tells you to  _ sit your ass down so we can record, Wentz. _

Patrick doesn’t meet your eyes during recording, but he sings your lyrics with his melody and creates something that won’t let you look away. In five hours with nearly twenty takes you have a demo. It feels like everything you missed in  _ Infinity  _ and more.

You catch him afterwards with a soft, “‘Trick,” that stops in his tracks. He turns around, slowly, and you take his hand with both of yours. He hesitates before squeezing yours and glances at you from under his lashes.

You open your mouth as your mind scrambles for words that won’t come, so you settle for rubbing a thumb over his hand instead until his expression eases and he sighs.

“I know,” he says, instead, and your shoulders loosen. 

“It’s gonna be great, ‘Trick. Just wait and see,” you say, and the words feel electric flowing from your tongue. “It’s gonna be  _ everything _ .” 

The last word comes out more breathless, more wistful with something darker buried, than intended and Patrick narrows his eyes. 

Translator, you remind yourself as alarms begin to sound in your head.

You drop his hand and step back like he’s burned you. Patrick furrows his eyebrows and he looks you over like they’re searching for something. 

“Pete,” Patrick starts, gently. “Are you- have you been taking your meds?”

The smile on your face freezes and you pray he doesn’t catch it. Something flashes across his face, though, and you know he has.

Patrick scoffs, eyes widening and mouth dropping open into something torn between furious and confused. You step back the same he steps forward and he pushes you lightly but it’s enough to catch you off guard and have you stumbling.

‘I-,” You start, but he cuts you off with another shove that has you tumbling backwards. You’re not going to fall alone this time, though, so you grab him and watch as his eyes widen with a yelp as you both fall.

He lands on top of you and you watch, breathless as he pins your hands above your head and stares down at you. He’s split somewhere between fury and expectant, and you’re not sure which is worse.

“You promised,” Patrick seethes, chest heaving, and still so fucking beautiful fuming on the ground of the ally outside the recording studio. “You promised you wouldn’t do this again, Pete. You fucking swore you’d try to get better. How long have you been off them?  _ Fucking shit _ , how long has it been since you’ve slept?” 

You want to snap back, feel the anger flooding your veins and relish in how it feels so good. You want to say something awful, want to tell him to count all the nights he’s been out and do the math for himself. 

But there’s the trick, again. You’re not his and he’s not yours and it doesn’t mean anything more than that- anything more than playing into your own delusion. You bare your teeth in a snarl, instead. 

Patrick growls and really you should see the punch coming. It still hurts. 

You laugh, head thrown back, blood in your teeth- furious and feeling. When he crawls off of you, you’re panting as he grabs your arm and pulls you up.

“I’m calling Andy,” Patrick says, pulling you into the parking lot, the phone already dialing. “And we’re gonna fix this.”

_ Fix this _ doesn’t mean the same as  _ fix you _ , you know, and when you smile at him you hope he sees the blood.

 

\---------

 

Three days later you’re in a new therapist’ s office with a new prescription in your hands and the rest of your band and security team guarding the door.

“You reported numbness with your previous prescription,” the psychiatrists says, smiling softly as she hands you your new pills. These are red. You like them better instantly. “These should help with that.”

When your session is finished you take two of them dry in the bathroom down the hall, still not sure if you really believe her.

 

 ---------  
  


Originally, you call it _ Folie a Deux  _ as an inside joke in your rough drafts. Patrick doesn’t seem to think it’s as funny as it is when you end up keeping the title.

You think of blood in hotel room toilets, shards of shattered hearts scattered across tour buses and too big venues, watching Patrick every chance you got, and decide it’s fitting. 

After the announcement is made, after recording and not meeting Patrick’s eyes in anything but a challenge, an interviewer asks about the name choice and Joe answers with the definition.

Joe shrugs and says, “It’s, like, a ‘madness shared by two’. A psychosis where a paranoid or delusional belief is transmitted from one person to another.” And the interviewer nods along like they get it, and you want to  _ laugh _ .

You smile, think of the two red pills you swallowed this morning instead of flushing, and press your fingertips into your seat. You don’t look back when Patrick glances at you. 

“You heard it here first,” the interviewers continues, turning back to the cameras with a smile. “Fall Out Boy’s new album _ Folie a Deux _ coming soon!” 

When the cameras shut off, you wish you could follow them.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and kudos are much appreciated and I'm rhymesofblau on tumblr.


End file.
